‘Napoleon – A Life’ by Andrew Roberts

A simply incredible book about an incredible Man. A complicated man who bears responsibilities for death and destruction across Europe, Russia and the Caribbean but a man of incredible drive and intellect who rose from a very minor (if at all) noble on Corsica to become an Emperor of Europe.

It is well worth reading in its entirety.

My takeaways:

• Napoleon’s mother birthed 15 children of which 8 survived childhood – of those 8, one was an emperor, two became kings, two became princesses and the rest became nobles
• His first crush, a minor noble in France, became the Queen of Sweden
• Napoleon commanded an push on the British at age 24 which cast the British out of France for several decades
• Rule No.1 of military history – ‘Never march on Moscow’
• Napoleon was an exceptional micro-manager which, due to the communication delays, meant that he had to think several hours ahead on each battle – he was the original 4th dimensional chess player and was only defeated in 4 of his 60 battles.
• There was a large amount of sadness in his life from dying friends and being separated from his son – his success is tinged with a deep sense of this sorrow in the biography
• His relentless reading mirrors the great readers of any age – extraordinary reading combined with a high drive has always been, and will likely to be, a path to success
• People can rise quickly as a result of chaos – there is no limit to a person’s trajectory during these transition times (The Expanse series calls this the ‘churn’)
• The story of escaping Russia is only more incredible when the details are known – two pontoon bridges allowed the last remaining French soldiers (including Napoleon) to escape Russia

• The Russians had to burn down Moscow to stop Napoleon – he was not really beaten but rather the Russians wounded themselves so harshly, there was little for the French to survive on
• Effectively the Russian campaign and the Battle of Leipzig was the end – not Waterloo, although Wellington played out of his skin to thoroughly destroy Napoleon’s legacy.
• Napoleon created so many elements of French society – the legal code, banking and debt laws, meritocracy, scientific research, abolishing slavery – and then exported it to a range of European countries such that he sits at the core of what we understand of modern society as much as any one
• He sold the Lousiana Purchase because he thought that American colonies were worth more trouble than he could handle, particularly when it was an American colony – it is not clear that this was a bad idea at the time (hindsight is 20/20) and its very debatable how long the French would have held on to the territory without a war
• Each battle he fought would become a case study for battle tacticians – artillery charges, marching in columns and then attacking at rows, concentrating on weak points, wedging between two enemies – his successes were so clear that enemies were able to rapidly learn and adopt it
• He was so forward thinking and innovative that each of his innovations where met with incredulity – not that it was crazy but that ‘of course, that is how it should be done’. That is real innovation, when smart people say ‘why did I not think of that?’
• If I were draw an link to a person today, my mind turns to Elon Musk – the complicated brilliance, the relentlessness, the fluid relationship with the truth(!), the forlorn loving of odd women, the strange relationship with wealth, the fearlessness, the innovation, the high profile and complicated family – hopefully not the same ending for Elon as Napoleon was exiled to St Helena and died of stomach cancer at 51.

Amazon